What Authors Don't Understand About Agent Rejections

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Literary agent rejection letters can feel generic, unhelpful, and discouraging. After all, you put so much time and effort into your query package — you polished your sample pages, nitpicked your query letter, and emailed everything out at the right times. It can feel insulting to hear that your story “just wasn’t the right fit” for the umpteenth time. But remember — literary agents aren’t trying to crush budding authors’ spirits. This video aims to give you some context behind the form rejection letter, so that the sting of an agent rejection doesn’t hurt as much.

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MORE BOOK PUBLISHING ADVICE:
 
THE CONTEXT BEHIND LIT AGENT REJECTIONS: 
02:24 – Agents don’t have time
04:13 – The industry is subjective
05:45 – They don’t want to discourage you
06:38 – What to do when you do get feedback
 
ABOUT ME: 
My name is Alyssa Matesic, and I’m a professional book editor with 7+ years of book publishing and editorial experience. Throughout my career, I’ve held editorial roles across both sides of the publishing industry: Big Five publishing houses and literary agencies. The goal of this channel is to help writers throughout the book writing journey—whether you're working on your manuscript or you're looking for publishing advice.
 
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[stephenwolberius]

You could have addressed the "DNR's" e.g. "Did Not Reply" aka Agents ghosting you. Those are the most frustrating, especially if they don't even give you a deadline of "if we haven't responded by x weeks, it's a pass". Those are, in my experience, about half the "response" you get.

[SaraJaneTriglia]

I don’t know. After querying two years I think this is flawed. Authors are supposed to craft a thoughtful query letter with a personalized note in each one. This takes a lot of time. I often take an hour or two per query. Yet, agents are too busy to give us one sentence of feedback? That just seems disrespectful, especially since agents expect a personalized letter (and apparently hate receiving generic ones when they only respond with generic ones). Authors don’t get paid anything to query and we don’t have the time either.

I just received a rejection for a query I sent 8 months ago. She told me she didn’t read the material I sent because my MS was too long for my genre. Then she linked an article stating typical genre lengths. In the article she sent, it stated YA sci fi should be 100k-115k. Mine was 103k.

As a professional, I already did my due diligence to make sure my MS was the correct length. I edited it down from 165k to 103k for that reason. My editor confirmed it was a good length. And it takes this agent 8 months (the time it takes to make an actual human being) to reply with that?

And I couldn’t even respond to refute it (or at the very least ask for an explanation of her incorrect statement) because agents don’t take replies to rejections.

This entire process gives the gatekeepers all the power and leaves authors feeling small and invisible.

I’m honestly tired of the way the industry is. It’s deeply flawed.

[WRLO]

"Advice is a dangerous gift, even from the wise to the wise." J.R.R. Tolkien

[abesapien]

"They don't want to discourage you." Yikes, that's a terrible reason to withhold feedback. How is any artist expected to become better at their craft without feedback? Discouragement is your choice, and not in someone else's power. This is worlds apart from the gaming industry. If you go to a game publisher and pitch your idea, 9 times out of 10 they will tell you what's great about your idea and what's terrible. No hesitations--they just give it straight to you. And that process consistently makes you better. I've experienced it myself!

[cjpreach]

My first submission was made directly to a publisher. They were kind enough to tell me the ground rules, and that's how I learned about the Literary Agent and "unsolicited manuscripts." I don't expect anyone in the publishing industry to show interest until they SHOW interest.

[andeeharry]

The case is, they are fussy and will go along with the market to what sells. It isn't you, it isn't whats's 'hot' at the moment. They will ignore anything they dont like and remove 90% of queries to meet thier quota. Yeah, this stuff has been mentioned by a few insiders.

[djoseph]

Alyssa, I really appreciate your observations and optimism. I look forward to watching most of your videos. My querying journey has now been about two years of rejections with little feedback (though the few who have given it have been very helpful). I do not think that your explanations for why they don't respond are as acceptable as you make them sound, and here are some reasons why.

1) Modern computers can have many rejection form letters they can cut and paste from in their reply. Craft a rejection form letter that has built-in feedback. It's not rocket science or very time-consuming.
2) You said it yourself: they care about putting food on their plate... hence they are NOT my advocate, but are, more accurately, their own.
3) Telling an author why you stopped (nothing more) is so useful and requires little to no extra work on their part. I am certain most authors understand it is just an opinion, but as you have pointed out many times. Minor things can be fixed easily and make a world of difference.
4) If they are fielding too many queries, then they need to close down more often. If agencies should be hiring more agents, that's on their bosses. But if you can not give proper courtesy to your front door, reduce the intake.
5) As the publisher's gatekeeper, simple feedback should be an expectation. After all, they are preventing me from pitching the publishers directly, right?
6) Your book may be good but not great. Good is 50, 000 copies, and great is 1, 000, 000+ copies. Agents don't seem to want to waste their time with the former. I get it, but this again points back to the fact that they are not even literature advocates but merely looking for low-lying fruit.

Another comment you make that pokes me is that literary agents aren't trying to crush the author's spirit. I know this is true, but, in my opinion, that isn't a good thing. They are indifferent to our spirit. You even acknowledge this in this video, saying how you understand how devastating getting these vague form letter rejections can be. I'd say most agents understand this, but they shrug their shoulders and go... 'bummer.' From my side, it is humiliating, demoralizing, and if I were in their shoes, I don't think I could do what they do and sleep well at night.

I'm sorry if this comes off as a frustrated author. I watch your videos and others, and I feel like you are all justifying bad behavior. Whether my book is good enough or not is not the point. I can safely say that only a smattering of agents cared enough to point out anything constructive. I understood that I blew it with them. Still, their comments made my book more solid for future queries, hopefully reducing a future agent from having to endure that particular problem. Now that I think about it, it also points out that they are not advocates for other literary agents either.

The bottom line is that I find this industry quite wanting, and I am not jazzed by these justifications for what I see as wrongful behavior.

[rowan]

Great timing. Have been getting rejections for my latest YA fantasy novel, one saying exactly "it's not the right for for me". Even when it is, according to their requirements.
It's indeed frustrating as so far every book I queried (four now), have been rejected for the last 3 years. No feedback. Just generic responses. My previous one was a steampunk fantasy, so I wasn't too surprised that is got rejected as it's not a high trend, but it still doesn't make me feel better.

Still hope my YA will eventually get an agent. Many more to query as I've started over a month ago in small patches. At this stage, as I plan to make a trilogy out of my YA novel, I'm not sure if I should continue writing the series or start a new story. This is the frustrating bit.

[AFringedGentian]

This is exactly what I needed today, Alyssa, thank you. Seventeen form rejections so far. No requests. I’m querying cozy feel good soft sci fi which I understand is a hard sell right now. But this video reminded me to keep going. I do have about twelve queries still out there.

[alancook]

Thank you A. You know these things from the inside and it's very valuable to get your reactions and positive insights.

[nicholaslewis]

Invaluable insights, as usual. Thanks Alyssa!

[clintoreilly]

Well said, Alyssa. Truly motivating, also.

[melvindodson]

I have learned so much from you thanks 👍 this is a great podcast have a great happy Thanksgiving

[robblackwell]

Agents are genuinely overworked and stressed. That said, there is no real reason they can’t have a list of reasons why they’re rejecting and cut and paste the main one that’s causing the rejection. It would take 10-15 seconds tops. As authors, we’re expected to contact them with material that is nearly perfect and with a personalized query letter (which I don’t think helps anyway) ie. to do a massive amount of work with zero guarantee of pay. We do this, many of us, while maintaining at least a full time job or even two jobs plus family and relationships. Agents give minimum feedback because they can. We, as authors, are expected to bare the brunt of their unfair workload when we may have even less resources. What would help, at least with children’s books is for SCBWI to advocate for authors when dealing w agents for some standard practices (respond within a reasonable amt of time and respond w at least minimal feedback, standardize submission packages so that we don’t have to customize each submission with varying page counts or answering w our personalized playlist in Querytracker, limit agents to how many queries they can have sitting in their inbox without response) AND to advocate for agents when dealing with publishers (make payouts sooner, respond within a reasonable amt of time, etc.) I work in the theatre industry and thought it was the most unfair profession…… until I started writing. All this said—I write happily—query enthusiastically and will keep going no matter what. What I refuse to do is have low self esteem and to not expect anything from agents. Do better. You’re risking self publishing becoming the norm because your gate is too high, too cryptic, too silent.

[PetProjects]

The most feedback I've ever received is that my story is too short (at 43, 000 words), which more or less told me I need to expand my story somehow.

[ananda]

Forgive in advance if I come across harsh: So what if “an agent doesn’t have the time” - this doesn’t seem like a worthy or even simply a wise excuse given their particular chosen line of work? Why not set the example of investing in the process of building your community, especially this kind of community of creatives who are willing and wanting to change and who likely recognize they are not complete products yet? It just seems like a rash and a lacking in foresight type of decision and rationalization. Can’t you simply communicate with whatever powers are restricting your abilities to do this fundamental function of your job and convince them it’s in everyone’s best interests to include this as part of the job given the greater universal process that truly dictates and controls the production of arts, outside of the control of an agency or whatever?

[nicholaslewis]

I hope to become an Alyssa success story. You'll be the first to hear about it!

[mariangriffin]

I was wondering if you were going to address the Twitter issue. Do you know which platform most agents are moving to? Are they leaving Twitter at all? Have the Pitch sessions moved away from Twitter? Thanks.

[duke_of_lilywhite]

So Alyssa, what you're saying is unless you have a close personal friend inside the publishing business, you're better off buying a lottery ticket. Your odds of getting all six numbers in the Powerball are much better than getting a publishing contract from one of the five big publishing houses. Okay, I get it.┌( ಠ_ಠ)┘

[SuperBeanson]

Why on earth would you have a cushion with your name on???